The best news is the African Media Initiative and others want to continue and expand the Code4Kenya experience in Kenya and beyond. Continued success will depend on how the host organizations further embed open data and technology in their operations, and, even more importantly, how the applications and stories they have created have broader impact.

Making your business data driven requires monitoring a lot more data than you are used to, so you will have a big-data hump to jump. The bigger is the data at play, the more is the need to handle bigger interfaces, multiple data sources etc.

GroupM, the world’s largest ad buyer by billings, is centralizing its IT to create the cost savings needed to rollout Big Data analytics across its 120 offices around the world… The company’s current approach has made tracking IT expenses difficult. The centralized approach will allow executives to monitor the return on Big Data investments through Apptio, an IT management platform that tracks costs associated with technology allocation and charges business units for what they spend. “We want to make sure we’re making these large scale investments as efficiently as possible,” Mr. Donnarumma said.

Big and open data is not just about tracking consumer habits and improving organizational effectiveness. Though certainly these things are important, we cannot miss the opportunity to harness this movement to move the needle on social problems that have long seemed intractable. Because, as the world has increasingly become a hyperconnected place, these issues are personal for us all.